Monday, March 17, 2008

tornado damage update

This post probably isn't all that interesting, but since my blog also serves as my personal journal, I'm going to post about the progress of the storm damage. It was a month ago today when the tornado hit Prattville. Although most houses & businesses have a long way to go to get back to normal, they have also come a long way since 4 weeks ago. The sound of hammers on rooftops and the sight of busy contractors swarming our neighborhood are familiar to us. Wal-Mart reopened just a week after the storm, and they are now getting a face lift & new flooring. A large section of the store is still blocked off due to construction, so hopefully soon they'll be back to normal. Regions Bank, Whitney Bank, the car wash, K-Mart, and the shopping center behind Krystal still have a long way to go. K-Mart is apparently unsure of their future; their employees received notice of termination a week or so ago. (This is really sad because I love the Martha Stewart home products that are only offered at K-Mart!)

So...on to the progress at our house. We got a new roof a couple of weeks ago, and we got our mailbox replaced about a week & a half ago. We decided to hire a general contractor because all of the little repairs were getting overwhelming since both of us work during the day & that makes it hard to make so many phone calls. Chris Mitchell is our GC and he is the son of the president of PCA, so we trust him. It's great to have someone we know because we can just hand off our house key to him & not worry about folks stealing stuff. Anyway, we're getting carpet installed today, and hopefully we'll have new flooring in the dining room & kitchen/breakfast room later this week. We have verified with the GC that we do have enough money to upgrade our flooring! We're getting hardwood in the dining room and tile in the kitchen/breakfast/laundry room. Hopefully we'll also have enough money to get a fence built, but we don't know yet if that will happen or not. We also still don't have windows, but we hope to have those within the next week or two. It is rather drafty in the house right now. :-)

Baron's car was totalled. He is shopping for a new vehicle this week while on spring break. He'll be looking at a truck this afternoon, so by the time some of you read this, he might already have something! He has been enjoying driving his rental car - a 2008 Dodge Charger - so he may not be in a huge hurry to replace it. :-) My car is on a waiting list at the shop, and I expect to get a phone call any day now to take it in.

For awhile, things seemed to be moving slowly, but now they're starting to come together. Part of me is anxious to get things back to normal, but the other part of me realizes that there are a lot of folks who have much worse damage than we do. We are blessed to only have annoyances like unusuable furniture & broken windows; we do at least still have a house standing!

{Click Here for article in the Montgomery Advertiser about the storm damage progress}{Click Here for WSFA's story on the progress}

6 comments:

One additional comment; as you and Baron deal with the details of repairing and replacing, you realize what a big task it is. Few folks stop to think about how much goes into getting a store like Wal-Mart back into operation. Some of our clients at Pre-trial work there and have been working 70-80 hour weeks to re-open and repair while open. Even employees at other stores in the area have worked very long hours so that extra workers could be sent to Prattville. We take a lot for granted.